“THE DEPARTMENT OF WHAT IT (REALLY) MEANS TO BE HUMAN is told with a consistent gentleness, and generosity, that gives these philosophical questions room to breathe.” Niall Harrison reviews M. Darusha Wehm locusmag.com/review/...
Notwithstanding that I have "critic" in my bio, I'm probably more comfortable with "reviewer", since I do this as an avocation. Reader and fan also. If memory serves @renay.bsky.social called me a "canny biped" once, quite fond of that.
"On the Calculation of Volume is almost more fun to think with than to read – and for a novel of ideas, that’s no bad thing" www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Finished Cameron Reed's What We Are Seeking: marvellous. Have to say, between this & Loss Protocol & Event Horizon & Calculation of Volume IV & The Apple and The Pearl & The Illuminated Man, my 2026 reading is going pretty darn well. And I haven't even read Nonesuch or The Misheard World yet.
Sometimes you finish a book and you just gotta write about it immediately, because it's jangling around in your head with another thought. Today was one of those days.
Review of On the Calculation of Volume III by Solvej Balle (tr. Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell).
First let me explain. Some of you have expressed a certain bewilderment at the tone I take; the occasional bursts of disrespect, the sometimes sly and illucid asides. “What is he trying to say?” they ask, thus betraying the fact we never speak of—that a review column these days must first of all be a vehicle for a philosophy of literature, and only secondarily a guide to my ideas on how your book money should be spent.
Algis Budrys on book reviewing, February 1966
Really good review this, both of its kind (analysing an anthology as a project rather than simply individual stories) and in its specifics (around generosity and complicity) strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...
Apropos of recent Never Let Me Go discourse, M John Harrison's contemporaneous review: "It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street" www.theguardian.com/books/2005/f...
Depends a bit on the context, I feel
The Department of What It (Really) Means to be Human by M. Darusha Wehm: Review by Niall Harrison locusmag.com/review/...
In which Nick announces a project: "I’m going to have a go at [reviewing the BSFA shortlist] explicitly from the point of view of the future, where the criteria I apply to judging the value of the book are shaped by its success in foregrounding the historical mechanisms of change"
Another interesting novel from Gold SF
This discussion mostly made me want to get around to reading one of my unread Ishiguros
A bumper load of essays and reviews: our March link round-up is live!
It says "supported by the BFS" and I would love to know whether that's financially or in terms of recommendations or what. I would like to know the process in general.
Interesting book, that. Not small though.
My review of Rie Qudan's Sympathy Tower Tokyo (trans. Jesse Kirkwood) appeared in the September issue of Locus. After some back and forth, I was informed that the review would not run on the magazine website, so I am reprinting it today on my blog. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/03/symp...
Yes, always peering through an idiosyncratically placed keyhole.
Lem, maybe Strugatskys (e.g. -> MJH's Kefahuchi Tract books). But agree with @coimeas.bsky.social that likely a very small number.
Agree with that (and I really like that collection)
But at the moment (and I'm willing to be talked out of it) at the moment I think I do still like the position I take at the start of the review, of trying to think about what a given style is offering, rather than (as I do see happen) always short-handing as "old fashioned"
I think this intersects with another point made towards the end of the pod, the relationship of politics and style; how much is the didactic tone of certain older SF read as "male" for instance; further complicated when the work is in translation and coming from a different political context anyway.
Possibly it resonated because I recently wrote a review where I was grappling with that in the context of translated work that derives at least some of its notion of what SF is from work that is "old" in Anglospheric terms locusmag.com/review/if-we...
As mentioned in yesterday's discussion, another aspect that interested me in this pod was the discussion of the style of older SF (Asimov is the example used) *as* style, that is, a use of language that achieves something for its readers.
Also, and I may post about this separately, one of the points where I was nodding so vigorously I nearly lost my headphones was during a defence of Asimovian style *as a style*, ie a form of language that was achieving something for its readers.
I think there's probably an element of that social/external pressure as well, yeah. I just do also think there is something about what is being represented that draws the eye/mind.
Right, I'm not disagreeing that the balance could stand to be shifted, I'm offering a different theory about why the balance point is where it is.
And sure, those departures are created and given meaning through style. But linguistic choices aren't the *only* interesting thing about a transformed ecosystem, or a space elevator; the *way* in which they are created in the mind is not the only thing that matters; *what* they are matters also.
